Canadian Maritimes

From dKosopedia

Category: Canada

The Canadian Maritimes are the relatively small Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and tiny Prince Edward Island. The island of Newfoundland is part of Atlantic Canada but has a separate history and only became part of Canada in 1949, and only gained control of mainland Labrador thereafter - before that it was part of Quebec and this may lead to extreme tension in the event of a Quebec sovereignty referendum. Note that this issue would not affect the Maritimes at all which retain extremely friendly relations with Quebec, especially New Brunswick with its half French speaking Acadian population, the close kin to Louisiana Cajuns.

With a total population under two million people and an economy deliberately retarded by Ontario, there is widespread speculation that in the event of a successful Quebec sovereignty referendum, the Maritimes would seek some closer ties to New England, especially Maine and Massachusetts.

This movement is called back to 1840 and evokes the time when Nova Scotia's first democratic leader, Joseph Howe, sought for NS to be its own separate country within the British Empire - now called the Commonwealth. This phrase has actually been heard recently in the context of trade summits and the plan to renew highway and sea connections between NS, ME, and MA, as far as Buffalo, NY where there is a bridge back into the Niagara Region of Ontario. Moving midwestern and Ontario tourists to the Canadian Maritimes and New England via a land route that bypasses Quebec and provides alternatives to the threatened Port of New York is thought to be one of the motives of this seemingly economic initiative.

It is easy to imagine circumstances in which such routes would become critical:

• A devastation or shutdown of the Port of New York due to asymmetric warfare
• Political tension and standoff following a Quebec sovereignty referendum that makes tourist and trade traffic from Ontario unwilling to go through Quebec
• Imports avoiding the Port of New York and Port of Richmond due to Homeland Security bureaucracy, landing goods in the Port of Halifax so that only those goods subject to closer scrutiny would delay overall shipments